


catastrophe theory

by orphan_account



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Mathematics, Mentions of alcohol, Mutual Pining, mentions of vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 21:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20414332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: One day Renjun asks him, “Do you think Donghyuck is hot?”And, well, it all goes downhill from there.translations available onWEIBOandLOFTER





	catastrophe theory

**Author's Note:**

> > lotsa mathsy stuff and if it sounds like idk what i'm talking about its because i dont  
> haven't completed anything in a while!!! so please let me know your thoughts ♡♡♡

“Do you think Donghyuck is hot?” Renjun asks him one day. They’re sat in the library at a small table hidden near the back, almost full to the brim of the various textbooks Renjun pulled off the shelves and opened up but hasn’t yet read. Jisung’s assigned himself to a small corner, his laptop out and a series of Hello Kitty highlighters stacked neatly on top of his notepad. 

He chokes on his own spit. “What did you say?”

Renjun rolls his eyes but doesn’t look up as he flips a page. “We’re in a Library. It’s silent. You  _ heard _ me. So what’s the verdict? You want to get it on or what?”

Jisung stares open-mouthed. He’d been waiting— _ praying _ —for a distraction for the past hour and a half, but he hadn’t expected this. He slams his jaw shut with a clack that echoes and, ignoring Renjun’s snickers, turns back to his laptop. He loves math. He loves looking at graphs all day. Nothing sexier than the swollen curves of cusp geometry.

Renjun doesn’t say anything else and maybe that’s worse. The bastard lets Jisung stew in his own misery, a horrible concoction imprinted on the back of his eyelids consisting solely of parabolas and Donghyuck’s face. It swims in the darkness of his mind, those golden ratio cheeks and heart-shaped lips that Jisung just wants to plot on some smooth, sexy graph paper and—

“I don’t like you. Why are you doing this to me?” Jisung whines, about to slam his head down on the desk but he realises at the last minute that his laptop’s there, so he shuffles to the side and slams it down on his notepad instead. A gudetama pen clatters to the floor. Renjun snorts so loudly that someone a few aisles back shushes them. Slightly embarrassed, Renjun turns another page of one of the textbooks. Jisung frowns. “Are you even reading them? Or is this another ploy to make me  _ suffer?  _ I’m cramped here you know, I’m a big person, and—”

“Alright you big baby, how about this: I’ll pack up these books if you answer my question.” 

Jisung falters, pictures the table empty, all that space for his highlighters  _ and _ he can whip out the graph paper, lay it flat on that smooth oak surface, maybe plot out a few graphs he’s had on his bucket list…. 

Then, he looks up from the table to Renjun, to that sly smirk spread out across his lips, and he swallows down the graphlust.

“Why do you want to know?” he asks. 

“I’m asking the questions here, not you.”

Jisung narrows his eyes. “You’re not trustworthy in the slightest.” 

Renjun leans across the table to cover Jisung’s hand with his own. “Jisung-ah. Anything you say stays between us,” he says, and Jisung knows immediately that it’s a lie. He sighs and laces his fingers with Renjun’s own.

“Jeno doesn’t count as  _ us.”  _

“You and Jeno are like, the same person,” Renjun says, voice edging on exasperation. Jisung can’t understand why Renjun’s so desperate to know what Jisung thinks of Donghyuck. Not that Jisung  _ thinks _ of Donghyuck. The D word never crosses his mind. Nope. Not at all. 

Jisung unlinks his fingers with Renjun’s and bends down to pick up his pen. When he comes back up, he straightens it out beside the Hello Kitty highlighters, and then settles back into his chair to fix Renjun with a blank look. 

“If Jeno and I are the same person then he should know the answer.”

Renjun narrows his eyes. “You math majors think you’re so clever just because you stare at numbers all day.”

“I’m not staring at numbers, I’m staring at  _ graphs.” _

“You just proved my point,” he groans, eyes narrowing further when Jisung giggles. He reaches out to pick up one of the many textbooks on the table and buries his head inside of it. “I’m not talking to you anymore. Goodbye, and good riddance.”

Jisung meets Donghyuck for the first time at a party, the kind with rooms full of sweaty frat boys and so much alcohol that you can get drunk off the air. He only came because he’d heard from Renjun who heard from Mark that Jeno was coming, and two years ago, Jisung didn’t  _ just _ have a crush on Jeno. Some part of him thinks it was love, the kind that couldn’t be reduced down to arbitrary numbers and chemicals. 

So when Jisung arrived to the party and his iron sights fixed upon Jeno even through the haze of smoke and laser-lights to see him straddling some senior’s lap, kissing him so wetly it’s all Jisung would be able to hear for months, he made a prompt U-turn to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of vodka out of some poor comatose’s hand. 

And that’s where he saw Donghyuck, dressed down in leather pants and a sheer top, retching into the kitchen bin. 

He was vomiting so hard he was crying, gripping on to the bin for dear life, and Jisung couldn’t just leave him there. Bottle in hand, he walked over and began petting Donghyuck’s back to soothe him through each retch. 

And when Donghyuck finally had enough energy to stand back up, he looked at Jisung as if he painted the sunrise, and asked “are you Jesus?”

“No, just Jisung,” he answered.

“Jisung,” Donghyuck whispered to himself like the name was a revelation. “Do you take Seo’s theoretical math class?”

Jisung frowned. “Yeah, why?”

“I’m the TA. Dude, you like,  _ totally _ failed the midterm.”

And then he threw up over Jisung’s feet. 

The only reason Jisung doesn’t fail his other midterms is that Donghyuck decides to take him under his wing. _(“I’m like, spreading the mathematical agenda. And anyway I owe you one for the party.”) _This comes with one problem, though; each time he walks out of class with a stack of homework problems, his first thought is:_ I have to find Donghyuck. _

The moment Jisung becomes self-aware is a groundbreaking one, like Pavlov’s dogs realising after hours that the meat is a lie. He walks out of his 9am and stands still in the hall, the rest of the class filtering out and flowing around him while he stands, face blank, mind on the verge of breaking. 

Jeno, who had been waiting outside for him, waves a hand over his face in worry. “Are you… okay?” he asks 

“I’m having an existential crisis.” 

“Well, do you think you could have it while we walk? Your class ran over and Jaem’s blowing up the group chat with those hideous emojis to get us to hurry up.” 

This breaks Jisung out of his momentary crisis. He tugs his bag tighter on his back and squints at Jeno. “You’re not very motherly.”

Jeno just shrugs. “Jaemin birthed you, not me. I can’t believe  _ I  _ have to deal with the fallout.”

Jisung hums as they begin to walk to the cafe. “Renjun says we’re the same person.”

Jeno’s face twists like he’s unsure what to make of that. “Renjun says a lot of things.” 

After a minute his expression darkens, the same kind of look on his face that he’d had that one time he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the nape of Jisung’s neck. Jisung felt like the world fell out from under his feet, then, the kind of adrenaline surging through his veins that could only come from tipping too far back in your chair or one very attractive Jeno Lee making out with your neck. Jisung feels like that now. Stomach-knotting, breath-stealing. Not even because it’s  _ Jeno,  _ and Jisung once dreamt of marrying him, but because he knows what’s coming. 

The look Jeno pins him down with can only be described as predatory. “So. Renjun also says that—”

“Don’t say it. Don’t say his name.”

Jeno blinks, taken aback. “You really do have it bad. When Renjun said you were pathetic I didn’t know he meant  _ this _ pathetic.”

“I don’t have  _ anything _ bad,” Jisung hisses. “And it’s not pathetic. It’s…” he trails off, wracking his brain for what  _ it  _ is. They’d never defined it before. Are they study buddies, tutor and tutee, friends? Jisung’s never quite liked labels, happy enough to just float between states; he isn’t even sure he  _ wants _ to define them. He sighs. “I don’t know what it is.”

Maybe Jeno senses something in his voice because he doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t prod. The rest of the walk to the cafe is quiet and Jisung contents himself just to stare at the ground, at the weeds that grow up between the cracks in the pavement, thinking about how  _ they _ haven’t shoved themselves into a box. 

Sometimes Jisung feels like that: a weed blooming between the cracks in the pavement, unseen and unloved. Walked all over. 

The nausea doesn’t subside even as they approach the cafe. Jisung’s not in the mood for frappuccinos. He’d rather go home and curl up on bed and maybe watch some netflix. 

Just before they enter, Jeno reaches between them to hold Jisung’s hand. Jisung stares at him and then down at their hand. Jeno interlinks their fingers and smiles. He still feels nauseous, but now he’s more grounded. He squeezes back and smiles. Maybe Renjun was right. 

“Hyung hyung  _ hyung!  _ You’re going to be so proud of me! I completed all of the questions and I think I got all of them right.” 

They’re sat in an empty lecture hall, Jisung sitting at the front row with all of his work spread out in front of him and Donghyuck at the lecturer’s desk, marking scripts for one of his TA classes. Jisung prefers the lecture halls to the library: there’s a different kind of quiet in empty spaces, the kind that echoes, the kind that’s cold. It lets him think more clearly. 

The only time he can use the halls, however, is when Donghyuck’s with him. Back in the day, Donghyuck had whined, saying that  _ “you’re just using me, Jisung-ah. For the homework help, for the lecture halls, and for my pretty face” / “How am I using your face?” / “I don’t know, but I see you staring at it!”  _ This was back when Jisung was still healing his Jeno-wounds, and he let himself, just for a moment, entertain Donghyuck. He’d stared at him, eyes making a lunar landing and roving over his face, and— _ Houston, we have a problem!— _ he’d come to the terrible conclusion that oh my god. Lee Donghyuck was—

Donghyuck pats Jisung’s head and his mind goes blank. He looks up to see Donghyuck holding the stack of questions in one hand, looking over them, his other hand on Jisung’s head to pet him like a cat. Whether or not Jisung purrs is absolutely none of your business. 

“You know, Jisung, I think you did. Oh my god I’m tearing up.” Jisung looks up and true enough, Donghyuck’s eyes are glazed over with tears. “This is like,  _ monumental.  _ Oh baby, I’m so proud of you. We should celebrate.” 

The praise goes straight through Jisung’s ears, skips his brain, and settles directly in his heart, so fuzzy and warm that he feels himself vibrate from inside. He can feel his ears turn red and he ducks his head to hide them, but Donghyuck only laughs, not malicious, but delighted,  _ so  _ delighted. 

“Can we get pizza?” Jisung asks, voice soft and shy.

And Donghyuck smiles, pretty lips stretched to the shape of a half-moon, and says, “anything for you.” 

That night, they curl up on the floor of Donghyuck’s dorm, plug in the PS4, and eat so much pizza that the screen blurs in Jisung’s vision. And that’s how Jeno finds them: controllers forgotten in their laps, boxes of pizzas half-drowned in garlic sauce left on the floor, and Donghyuck asleep with his head on Jisung’s chest and Jisung most certainly not smiling into his hair. 

Jisung almost forgets about his existential crisis until the next cafe meeting. It’s unassuming enough: just Jaemin and Jeno buying him coffee before his evening classes because Jaemin’s the only one out of them that works, Jeno’s a freeloader, and Jisung’s a struggling freeloader. 

He settles down into the coffee shop seat whose shape has now moulded to his bum, a mug of piping hot mocha in his hands, and he could almost fall asleep. Jaemin talking is just background music in his ears until Jaemin places his cup down on the table and leans back in his seat. 

“So,” he begins and Jisung instantly knows he’s not going to like what he’s about to say. “I heard from Renjun who heard from Jeno that you and Donghyuck had a little dorm date the other day.”

“Jaemin,” Jeno whines.

“It wasn’t a date,” Jisung protests, words sharp and final. He turns to Jeno and whisper-shouts, “you  _ traitor.”  _

“I didn’t say anything!” Jisung narrows his eyes and Jeno fidgets, looks into his cup, and then sighs. He’s always been easy to break. “Okay, I did, but I didn’t use the word  _ date.  _ I said I saw you curled up on the floor. It’s chinese whispers!” 

Jisung takes a sip of the mocha. It’s not as warm as it was before, not as sweet. Something bitter fills his mouth, words he wants to say but shouldn’t. He swallows them down, places the cup on the table, and takes a breath. 

He doesn’t like being upset at his friends, knows that they’re good people that love him and would bend over backwards to do  _ anything  _ for him, but he can’t understand why they’re pushing this. Why what he thinks or feels is so interesting that they feel the need to bring it up in every conversation. He’s spent so long as that weed growing up between the cracks that now he’s been dug up and potted, it’s overwhelming: this whole new world where everyone’s looking at him, prodding,  _ prying.  _

He doesn’t want to cry, but before he knows it he’s sniffling and Jaemin’s handing him one of those scratchy shop napkins with a concerned frown. “Jisung—” he begins.

“Sorry, just… give me a minute.”

He sniffs in silence, wiping away his tears with those ridiculous tissues. Jeno holds one of his hands but looks down at the floor as if the sight of Jisung crying would make him cry too, and Jisung  _ knows _ that it will. The image of Jaemin fretting over a crying Jisung and Jeno—a lethal combination by any means—makes him laugh. 

They sit and watch as he calms down, both from his laughter and tears, quiet comfort that Jisung’s always admired them for. When he thinks he’s ready, he sucks in a breath.

“Can we… not? I don’t know why it’s so important to you, but… no more. Please.” 

Jaemin looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. He nods and sits back in his seat with a troubled expression. “Okay. No more.”

Just because they don’t talk about it anymore doesn’t mean that Jisung doesn’t think about it. It’s a cruel kind of inception, an idea. Plant it in your mind, water it a little, watch it grow. Except Jisung cuts off the water half way and his mind unhelpfully supplies the rest.

The next time they meet is in the lecture halls again. Donghyuck’s busy marking again, quiet as his pen scratches across the paper. Jisung has another stack of homework questions, this time only ten, the kind made to tease his brain. The last thing he wants to do right now is think. He’s so tired of thinking, of thoughts. All he wants is peace. He used to find it in Donghyuck but now Donghyuck’s his problem. 

He looks at Donghyuck sitting across from him, bottom lip pulled into his mouth and brow furrowed as he concentrates, and he wonders. Does he find Donghyuck hot? It’s funny, because it’s an easy question to answer. Of course he does. Donghyuck is burning, a simmering fire under his skin kindled by praise and the distant call of his name, the kinds of fires that eat Jisung inside-out.

What isn’t easy is what follows, the questions the answer begs.

For the first time in his life, Jisung’s not hung up on numbers, but words. They stare him in the face, vowels shaped like Donghyuck’s lips and consonants like his smile. God, if Jisung doesn’t want to recite them by heart. Donghyuck’s  _ poetry.  _

There’s an admission, there. Something to read between the lines that starts with  _ L  _ and leaves Jisung broken-hearted. 

Whatever it is, he shoves it to the back of his mind, packs up his bag, and leaves the lecture hall. He’s never been too good with words anyways. 

“Do you wanna get boba with us?” Renjun asks on a lazy sunday in the dorms. It’s been a few days since Jisung’s left the room, taken instead to nesting on his bed with a blanket Jeno knitted him for Christmas and his old MP3 player whose music consists solely of early 2000s R&B. In other words, Jisung’s  _ moping.  _

Renjun sounds nonchalant as he asks but Jisung can tell after years of knowing him that his words are gentle, carefully constructed. His eyes flicker between Jisung and the floor, and it’s almost pathetic. They’re tip-toeing around each other. And as much as Jisung’s hurt in the past few weeks, he’s tired of whatever mess has brewed between his friends.

He sits up, unfurling the blanket from around himself, and joins Renjun on his bed. It’s unexpected but Renjun shuffles to accommodate him. Jisung surprises even himself when he pushes Renjun down into the mattress and spoons him, tucking his face into Renjun’s nape. 

“Can’t we just stay here? ‘M tired.” Jisung’s breath tickles the back of Renjun’s neck and he laughs with each word. 

“You’re just a big baby,” he says, but as Jisung wraps his arms around his waist, he can feel Renjun relax. “The boys are on their way. A study break? It’d do you good.”

“Hyung. I haven’t studied in days.”

“Well, study session, then.” When Jisung doesn’t respond, Renjun shuffles around in his grasp so they’re face to face. “You should get outside. It sucks seeing you mope around.”

Jisung scrunches up his nose. “I’m not  _ moping.”  _   


“Yeah, you are.” After a minute he adds on, “I’ll buy for you?” 

Jisung smiles and squeezes Renjun’s waist. “Another day? I’m sleepy.”

Renjun searches his face, forehead creased in worry, but eventually sighs and rolls out Jisung’s grasp. “Fine. I’ll tell the other’s you’re sleeping.” He picks up the blanket from Jisung’s bed and drapes it over his frame. Jisung snuggles down into the familiar warmth. Renjun picks up his keys and coat and turns to leave. He stills half-way to the door, looks back. “I love you,” he says quietly. 

Jisung grins. “Love you too, hyung.”

The door clicks softly shut behind him, and Jisung closes his eyes.

Jisung dreams of space. He’s an astronaut decked out in a thick white suit and he’s floating through the darkness. He grasps onto his tether and swivels himself around and there he is, face to face with the entire world. It’s achingly blue. Jisung watches it turn, watches the storms bloom in front of him, lighting like eyelashes. Jisung’s felt like a single blade of grass growing up between the cracks in the pavement, but he’s never felt like  _ this,  _ miniscule beyond compare. An entire world full of love and pain and lives whose stories he’ll never hear.  _ Everything _ is right in front of him, staring him in the face.  _ Everything _ is achingly blue.  _ Everything _ is just out of reach.

Jisung tugs on his tether and it tugs back, but in the end something has to give. It snaps and Jisung begins to fall through space, his body pulled down by gravity through the atmosphere. He’s burning up, layer by layer, a face full of fire. Everything is red, now. Jisung feels the heat wrap around his body. He squeezes his eyes shut and prays that the landing is smooth. 

  
  


Jisung wakes up to a knock on the door. He hadn’t closed the curtains when he fell asleep and blue moonlight slips into the room, bathing it in a cool atmosphere that makes Jisung want to burrow back under the covers and hibernate till next spring. 

The knocking doesn’t cease, however. It’s so loud that it feels like it’s coming from inside his head. Jisung wants to reach over and pluck his MP3 off his bed and drown it out, but then the thought passes his mind that maybe it’s  _ Renjun _ and he actually ended up forgetting his keys. 

Jisung rolls out of bed with a groan and opens the door. It’s not Renjun on the other side.

“Donghyuck,” he frowns, rubbing his eyes of sleep to make sure that yeah, it really  _ is _ Donghyuck and not some fever dream. Donghyuck grins and pushes past him into the room, but Jisung doesn’t offer up much resistance. Just falls back and watches him take a seat on Jisung’s bed. He closes the door and sits opposite him on Renjun’s bed, hands fisted into the comfort of Jeno’s blanket. 

“You didn’t come for boba,” is what he says in way of a greeting. He almost looks sad, but maybe it’s a trick of the light. Jisung blinks again. Then, he says, “I missed you.”

He’s used to hearing things like that from Donghyuck, but now his words carry a different tone to them.  _ Trick of the light,  _ Jisung wants to say. He knows there’s no logic to it but Jisung’s sick of logic. Who cares about words or numbers or light when Donghyuck in front of him and he’s sad because Jisung didn’t meet him for boba of all things. He could be sad about the fact that Jisung upped and left without a word in the middle of their routine study session, but he focuses on  _ today.  _

Jisung grimaces, pulls his legs to the chest. “Sorry. Was tired.”

“I can see,” Donghyuck giggles. “Your hair is all over the place.”

Jisung reaches up and true enough, his hair is defying gravity. He smooths it down only for it to pop back up. He sighs and gives up. When he looks back at Donghyuck, he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, peering over at Jisung as if studying him. As if he’s a particularly difficult equation that Donghyuck can’t wrap his brain around. He’s got his lip between his teeth and his brow furrowed like he’s about to mark Jisung like midterms. He’ll pull out a red pen and scratch a big  _ F  _ on the centre of his forehead. 

All of a sudden, Jisung feels nervous. He looks down at the floor and wonders for the first time why Donghyuck’s here. 

“Is Renjun not coming back?” he asks. 

Donghyuck snorts. “He’ll come by later. He sent me over first.” Jisung raises an eyebrow. “Damage control.”

“Damage...?”

“He thinks you’re upset. And if I’m being honest, I think you’re upset too.” Jisung falls quiet at that, and Donghyuck studies him again for a moment before crossing the room and sitting beside him on Renjun’s bed. Their thighs touch and he can feel Donghyuck’s presence besides him, concrete and grounding. “I’m worried about you. You ran out on me the other day, and you don’t have to apologise for it. I get it. We all have bad days. But sometimes it helps to open up, and I’ll be a listening ear, if you’ll let me?” 

The irony of bleeding himself dry in front of Donghyuck of all people isn’t lost on him, but some part of Jisung thinks that maybe this was the only way it would be able to happen. He swallows down the messy thoughts and squeezes his eyes shut to parse them into something intelligible. 

“I’m sick of my feelings being disregarded. Which is ironic considering they’re actually considering my feelings but so much that it’s like… invading, and to be honest I don’t think about feelings too much, but—”

Donghyuck rests a hand on Jisung’s thigh. “Jisung. Take a breath.”

Jisung breathes. In. Out. 

“Everyone keeps asking if I find you hot.”

Donghyuck stops blinking and breathing, just stares stock-still at Jisung. He evidently wasn’t expecting that. After a moment he breaks out of his shock and looks down at where his hand is placed on Jisung’s thigh.

“And did you give them an answer?” he asks. 

Jisung shakes his head. “I couldn’t understand why they were asking? So I just… didn’t.” 

Donghyuck nods and falls silent. He toys with Jisung’s thigh, nimble fingers running down the length of it to his knee, eyebrows furrowed in thought. He hesitates, grips Jisung’s knee, and then turns to face him fully. 

His face bleeds nervousness as he says, “they were asking because I told them that I find  _ you _ hot. So I guess they wanted to like, see if the feelings were reciprocated.” 

Jisung  _ chokes.  _ “You find me hot?” 

The look in Donghyuck’s eyes is enough of an answer: blown pupils, shaking with nerves, but a fiery resolve only recently steeled. Jisung lets the newfound knowledge roll over him. Donghyuck finds him  _ hot.  _ Donghyuck! The D word! All of a sudden Jisung feels like he’s hurtling to Earth again, burning so brightly he blinds even himself. This is a crash landing if he’s ever felt one. 

His hands start shaking. He sits on them to hide them but he can’t hide the way his cheeks flush red or the dopey smile that tugs at his lips. Donghyuck thinks he’s  _ hot.  _

The smile falter when Donghyuck grows impatient and asks, “so, do you? Find me hot?” 

Jisung’s a math major. He’s learnt by now how to put 2 and 2 together to make 4 but his mind still trips over the fact that Donghyuck’s here with a hand on his knee, asking if Jisung finds him hot only moments after he confessed that  _ he _ finds Jisung hot, and you can see where the words get lost, can’t you? 

“I— I mean…” his eyes flit around the room before resting on Donghyuck’s face. “You, uh. You have eyes? A nose… lips…” Donghyuck’s face falls. “But they’re nice eyes! And I would like to kiss them very much.”

Donghyuck squints. “You’d like to kiss… my eyes?” Jisung gives a quick nod and Donghyuck snorts and pulls him up onto the bed and then flips them over so he’s hovering over Jisung. He can’t breathe for a multitude of reasons but he knows, in this moment, he’s truly crash landed. No parachute, just head-first dived into the ocean. Donghyuck slides up so he’s straddling Jisung’s waist. “You’re a mess, but I like you. I’ve liked you since the party. You were trying so hard to help me and you weren’t doing much at all but it was adorable.” 

Jisung sucks in a breath. His body feels like static. “You like me?”

Donghyuck nods and leans down even further so his forehead is pressed against Jisung’s own. He’s so close that he blurs in Jisung’s vision. “And I’d like to kiss you,” he says and when Jisung doesn’t reply, he’s quick to add on, “if that’s alright.” 

It’s more than alright. It’s so alright that Jisung leans up and kisses Donghyuck himself, burning from inside out, fire spilling out around him. Their lips move together in tandem, push and pull, conservation of momentum. Jisung’s crash landed and everything’s achingly blue, but everything’s right here, in his arms. 

  
  



End file.
